What Is the CIA Triad?

The CIA triad provides a simple and complete checklist for evaluating an organization's security. An effective IT security system consists of three parts: confidentiality, integrity, and availability, hence the name "CIA triad."

More than an information security framework, the CIA triad helps organizations upgrade and maintain maximum security while enabling staff to perform everyday tasks like data collection, customer service, and general management.

This guide will take you through each of the three components of CIA triad and examples to help bring them to life.

What is the CIA triad?

The CIA triad provides a high-level framework for cybersecurity professionals to consider when auditing, implementing, and improving systems, tools, and programs for organizations. It is a powerful way to identify weak points and form solutions to strengthen policies and programs.

Let's take a closer look at the three elements of the triad.

1. Confidentiality

Confidentiality involves protecting sensitive data private and safe from unauthorized access. This includes protecting information from bad actors with malicious intent, as well as limiting access to only authorized individuals within an organization. 

You could think of confidentiality as privacy. When you send an email, for example, you're directing the contents of that email to a specific person or group of people. The protections in place that keep your email private are measures related to confidentiality. Passwords, locks, and tokens are among these measures.

2. Integrity

Maintaining data integrity is important to make sure data and business analysts are accessing accurate information. Data shown to the public must also maintain integrity so that customers can trust the organization. A system with integrity keeps data safe from unnecessary changes, whether malicious or accidental. Cybersecurity professionals might implement access levels, enable tracking when making changes, and protect data when transferring or storing it.

Returning to our email example, when you send an email, you assume that the information you relay is the information that arrives to the recipient. If that information were altered along the way—say, for example, a third party intercepted the email and changed some key points—that data has lost integrity.

3. Availability

Availability refers to the idea that the people who need access to data can get it—without affecting its confidentiality or integrity. 

You want the recipients of that email you sent to be able to access it, display it, and even save it for future use.

Ensuring availability in data systems can be tricky because it may compete with the other factors in the triad. One of the best ways to protect data is to limit access to it. If you have an information security role, you may have experienced pushback from customers or coworkers about information availability.

The importance of CIA triad in cybersecurity

Because information security covers so many areas, it’s crucial to have one methodology to analyze situations, plan changes, and improve implementations. The CIA triad gives leaders a way to think about security challenges without being security experts. It helps data professionals assess what went wrong during a malfunction or cybersecurity attack and how it can be fixed.

CIA triad examples

Information security professionals often need to consider confidentiality, integrity, and availability in their organizations. These examples help you think through the three components of the CIA triad to make your system more robust.

Examples of confidentiality

An organization’s data should only be available to those who need it. Access to data such as human resources files, medical records, and school transcripts should be limited.

To prevent security breaches, confidentiality policies must be followed so access is limited only to authorized users. Data can be classified, labelled, or encrypted to allow restrictions. The IT team can implement multi-factor authentication systems. Employees can receive onboarding training to recognize potential security mistakes and how to avoid them.

Effective information security considers who receives authorization and the appropriate level of confidentiality. For example, the finance team of an organization should be able to access bank accounts, but most other employees and executives should not have access to this information. Some security measures include locked cabinets to limit access to physical files and encrypted digital files to protect information from hackers.

Confidentiality can be compromised unintentionally. For example, IT support might accidentally send a password to multiple employees, instead of the one who needs it. Users might share their credentials with another employee, or forget to properly encrypt a sensitive email. A thief might steal an employee's hardware, such as a computer or mobile phone. Insufficient security controls or human error are also examples of breached confidentiality.

Examples of integrity

An information system with integrity tracks and limits who can make changes to minimize the possible damage that hackers, malicious employees, or human errors can do. 

Organizations need to determine who can change the data and how it can be changed. For example, schools typically protect grade databases so students can’t change them but teachers can. In this case, a student hacker might bypass the intrusion detection system or alter system logs to mask the attack after it occurs.

Information on an organization's website should be trustworthy. In another example, a company website that provides bios of senior executives must have integrity. If it is inaccurate or seems botched, visitors may be reluctant to trust the company or buy its products. If the company has a high profile, a competitor might try to damage its reputation by hacking the website and altering descriptions.

To protect data integrity, encryption, digital signatures, and hashing can be used. Websites can use certificate authorities that verify its authenticity so customers feel comfortable browsing and purchasing products.

Examples of availability

All organizations have designated employees with access to specific data and permission to make changes. Therefore, security framework must include availability.

Information security professionals must balance availability with confidentiality and integrity. For example, all employees of an organization might have access to the company email system, but detailed financial records may only be made available to top-level leadership. Those leaders should be able to access that data when they need to, and it shouldn't take too much time or effort to access it.

Backup systems should be in place to allow for availability. For example, disaster recovery systems need to be implemented so employees can regain access to data systems if there is a power outage. Or, if a natural disaster such as a hurricane or snowstorm prevents employees from physically getting to the office, their data be available to them through cloud system storage.

Availability can be compromised through sabotage. For example, sabotage can occur through denial-of-service attacks or ransomware. To maintain data availability, organizations can use "redundant" networks and servers that are programmed to become available when the default system breaks or gets tampered with. Updating and upgrading systems on a regular basis prevents infiltrations and malfunctions which enhance data availability.

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